Weird

By: Joseph Schaefer

Not every day do you see a flying squirrel. Not every day do you see a grey squirrel do a flying squirrel impression. It just goes to show, when you really want something, you get it. Take this squirrel for instance...

By: Nesa Nourmohammadi

Leave it to a puppy’s curiosity to hand him in trouble.

One two-month-old pup almost found that out the hard way after getting stuck inside an exhaust pipe earlier this week in Thailand. Fortunately for the little guy, a group of rescuers came to its aid. Take a look at some footage captured from the scene:

As you can see from the clip, rescuers pulled out all the stops to help the puppy, going as far as to use some sort of power tool to cut the pipe. And it all paid off in the end!

See how this rescue compares to some of the greatest, and even weirdest, animal rescues captured on film!

By: Joseph Schaefer

WE WANT AN ENCORE!

Photographer Aditya Permana stumbled upon a forest dragon lizard in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, strumming away at his guitar leaf. Permana watched the lizard for an hour before getting the shot, according to a Huffington Post article.

Word is out that people are asking for the lizard to perform at Coachella, Bonaroo and Firefly Festival this summer. JUST KIDDING!

By: Shea Winpigler

"There will be a 90% chance of snow this evening, so gear up for a bad one, people."

"Thank you, John. Now Rebecca, back to you with sports."

We've all had that day, or several days, after watching the morning news and bracing for a storm or looking forward to a beautiful day, only to find that the weatherman was wrong. But we always hear stories of animals seeking safety and gearing up for weather changes before anything occurs. So, should we just watch the animals at the zoo? The pets in our home? Or the furry, flighty creatures in our backyards? Does animal instinct predict the weather better than meteorologists can?

Well, yes and no.

Animals have the ability to sense things we humans can't: changes in air and water pressure and high and low frequency sound vibrations, main indicators of weather change.

For example, when a hurricane is brewing, sharks don't know what's happening, but they do know that the hydrostatic (water) pressure is changing, so they seek safety in deeper waters, Jessika Toothman from HowStuffWorks reports.

And elephants can sense earthquakes, or well, they can't sense earthquakes, but they can sense the changes in vibrations beneath their feet triggered from the shock waves produced from its epicenter. These unusual vibrations let them know something is up and they flee to safety.

By: David Mizejewski

There are some creatures that are hard to believe aren't CGI creations from a sci-fi horror film. The bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois) is one of them.

Bobbit worms are giant invertebrates that lie in wait under the sand on the sea floor for an unsuspecting victim to swim or crawl too close. When that happens, they launch themselves upwards at speeds almost too fast for the human eye to see, grab their victim, and drag it to its death under the sand.

They can grow to lengths of over 9 feet. They are venomous. They got their common name from the fact that because they attack their prey with such speed and force they often cut the fish in half, similar to a what abused wife Lorena Bobbitt did to her husband's man-parts.

Here's another video showing the full body of a bobbit worm that was discovered lurking in an aquarium tank to add to the nightmare-fuel.

By: Joseph Schaefer

BFFs: Goat and Dog

This video went viral on social media, showing a white German Shepherd looking over and cuddling with a family's newborn baby Pygmy goat, a breed of miniature domestic goat. According to her owner, she took care of the adorable goat as if it were one of her puppies! Look at that face!

By: Jodi Westrick

Any day I get a delivery from Amazon (or any site that sends shipments in boxes, really) is the best day in the eyes of my cats - particularly for my tabby Etta. As soon as I empty the contents and place the box on the floor, Etta makes her way to it and curls up for a nap.

What is it about boxes that's so appealing to our feline friends? In Wired's "What's Up With That" series, they explore several theories attempting to explain this cat behavior. So why do cats love boxes?

Here are the theories:

1) Boxes provide security.

According to the article, ethologist Claudia Vinke of Utrecht University in the Netherlands has been studying the stress levels of shelter cats. In particular, she observed newly-arrived cats to Dutch shelters - a group of which was provided with boxes, and another group that was not.

Can you guess what happened?

Turns out, the cats with access to boxes were much less stressed out, were more willing to interact with humans, and got used to their new surroundings faster. So, it seems like those boxes your cat(s) love could be comforting spots for them.

By: David Mizejewski

Meet Mini-Moby the white harbor porpoise. Named after Moby Dick, the famous fictional white whale from the Herman Melvin book of the same name, Mini-Moby is an exceptional animal in more ways than one.

First, the condition that causes his white coloration is very rare. Mini-Moby is leucistic. Leucism is a genetic condition that causes an animal to lack pigmentation and appear white or mostly white (albinism is similar, but causes a total lack of pigmentation). Mini-Moby is mostly white with some darker coloration on his fins. Harbor porpoises are normally a gray color.

Second, harbor porpoises are special because they have made a remarkable comeback in the last few years in the San Francisco Bay, where they were absent for decades. The return of the species is a notable wildlife recovery success story in these times where the news about wildlife populations is usually bad. Here's a great video about the recovery.

Here's an excerpt about the work biologists are doing to study these harbor porpoises, Mini-Moby in particular, from an upcoming book by my National Wildlife Federation colleague Beth Pratt-Bergstrom, NWF's California Director. NWF is partnering with and supporting Golden Gate Cetacean Research's work on harbor porpoises.

“If it seems like making these connections from pattern identification would be an extremely time-consuming endeavor, then you are understanding the process. It requires an insane level of attention to detail. Sometime nature cuts the researchers a break with a very distinct looking animal. Take for instance, Mini-Moby. It’s a cetacean anyone can be trained to recognize. Mini-Moby is an albino porpoise first spotted in the Bay in 2011. He’s pretty hard to miss,” observes Bill, “he’s definitely the most recognizable porpoise in the Bay Area, if not the entire coast of California.” Almost entirely white, black accents decorate his dorsal fin and blowhole as if he donned the porpoise version of a tuxedo.

In the past 100 years, only a small number white porpoises have been documented worldwide, ranging in causes from true albinism to leucistic (reduced pigmentation) to hybridization with another animal. A GGCR paper, “First Record of Anomalously White Harbor Porpoises from the Pacific Ocean” characterized Mini-Moby’s condition as leucistic and also noted these animals appear to have a normal life span and despite their unique color don’t appear to be ostracized by their peers. Since Mini-Moby has proved social with other porpoises, he’s also employed as a natural marker for their research to track movements of his porpoise companions over time.

By: David Mizejewski

This species of anglersfish is known as the black seadevil. These terrifying-looking fish live in the deep ocean where no light reaches. The females have an appendage on their head with a bioluminescent tip. The glowing tip lures in potential prey just like lure on the end of a fishing pole, hence the name "anglerfish."

No one knows why so many creatures from the deep look like horror movie monsters. Perhaps our image of monsters is influenced by the human species' deep instinctual fear of the dark, cold depths of the ocean where we could never survive. Luckily, anglerfish are harmless to people.

Regardless of human impressions of them, anglerfish are a fascintating species, as this video proves.

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